Category: Origins

After completing this project I have can more or less say that I have created a character in the style of my chosen Golden Aged Animator (Preston Blair) and have presented a turnaround, expression sheet, 2 storytelling poses as well as a 800+ essay describing the characters Backstory.

I believe that my strengths within is this project were definitely the generation of the idea as well as the backstory of my character. Although Ray wasn’t my first idea, I managed to create the character as well as his story very easily when I did change. The idea for the character was really easy to come up with, and I got good feedback when I presented my character to my peers and tutors.

As for my weaknesses it will be (once again) in the drawing aspect of the project. Although I’ve made some improvement in my drawings as well as quickly adopting some of the styles of Preston Blair in a few of the drawings, it’s easy to see that I still need some practice. For example most of my final drawings have thick, blurry, messy lines that ruin the image, as well as the lack of detail in the turnaround and expression sheet and that most of my drawing don’t even represent the style of Preston Blair. This is mostly due to lack of practice with my chosen animators style as well as my time management towards the end of the project. What I mean by this is that at the beginning and through the 2nd half of the project I had already create and finalized my idea, ready to be digitized and coloured, but I what I didn’t anticipated on was the lack of time I would have in the final week of the project, and so when it came to finally getting onto the cintiqs and didn’t have much time to finish it off. I’ve also shown some of my finish work to my peers and they have stated the ink work could use with a little more work or re-done and that my colouring is flat and could use with some shading in them to make them more dynamic, something that I will take on in the future.

If I was re-do this project my first thought will be to practice more of my drawings skills, especially under the style of Preston Blair as I’ve found that his style of drawing is quite easy for me to pick up, plus I like his style of drawing. As well as that would also take into consideration the time I have for the project and schedule in which I will be able to use the cintiqs so that when it comes to deadline I’m not rushing at the end of the project to submit it in.

Back Story:

Ray was born on April 23th 2038 and was raised on an Oil Rig that his father. He was small and innocent and loved parents very much. His father was a proud man, and would tell Ray stories about their family history, and that along the long line of Sunshine’s that have been passed over, their name was known to every Cubic (Cue-Ic) across the galaxy, which wasn’t a lot. As for his mother, she was kind and caring woman, who mostly spend her time at home either cleaning or looking after Ray whilst his father worked. Ray didn’t have any brothers or sisters, nor did he manage to make any friends besides the other workers on the rig, and would normally spend his days playing on the oil rig drinking his daily glass of milk that his mother would give him so he would big and strong like his father (this explains why he has that weird shrine to the last glass of milk his mother gave him).

One day, on the 10th anniversary of the oil rigs existence, a man called Salem approached the oil rig trying to convince Ray’s father to sell oil rig to him, his father rejected the offer and told the fat man to suck it. Salem left without saying a word, giving Ray’s Father the dirtiest of looks, but being a Sunshine he shrugged it off and went to celebrate with his wife and son, as well as the rest of the Cubic’s. But then everything changed as a fire broke out and began to spread across the oil rig platform, everyone began to flee until Ray’s father realised that his wife was still in the house, so in a rush to save her he demanded one of his workers to Ray somewhere save whilst he rescues his wife, as Ray watched from a far, he witnesses the oil rig burst into flames with his parents nowhere to be found.

With his parent’s unfortunate passing, Ray was then moved to his grandfather’s house in the countryside, it took some time but eventually Ray moved on from his parent’s death and manage to form a strong relationship with his grandfather, who fed and raised him to his young adult years. During this time his grandpa would always ramble on to him about his crack pot theories about the world they live in and the government that runs it, needless to say those theories sunk into Ray’s head. Eventually Ray’s grandpa passed away, leaving everything that he owned to Ray, including the house that they lived in that was standing on top of an oil mine, which was still a big thing at the time, and because of this he decided to turn the house into an oil shop. The shop did well for the first couple of years, but as the years went by the need for oil became rarer, with everyone switching to electricity for everyday needs, but this didn’t sway Ray’s devotion to keep the shop running despite the offers from salesman as well as his Fathers old rival Salem to sell his shop.

Sometime later Ray met a woman called Ellen at a local bar, the two hit it off and eventually began to date. She was a sweet, fun and loving Cubic that worked in an office in the city, with love cake and pickup trucks. After a couple of years the two married and moved into Ray’s home/store, where they had a little girl called Hannah (named after Ray’s mother), they were happy, but the happiness didn’t last. One day whilst Ellen was on the way back from work and having picking Hannah up from school, a truck under name of Salem ran a red light and hit their car, killing them both. Ray was devastated and fell into depression, closing down the shop and trying to drink the memories away.

One night after drinking from a bar, Ray began to walk home through the woodland to get back to his house, after tripping and stumbling for a couple minutes he could hear crying coming from a distance, investigating the noise Ray was lead to the main road that ran through the woodland to find a little girl crying in the middle of the road. Ray approached her asking what was she doing there and where her parents were, she replied saying that she had no idea and went back to crying. Ray looked around to see if he could spot anyone that would know anything about the little girl, but no one was there. So being the Good Samaritan he took the girl back to his house and called the Police to see if they locate the little girl’s parents. The police had no record of the little girl’s existence and decided that she would be better off going to an orphanage. The next day after the police took the little girl to the orphanage, Ray couldn’t stop thinking about the orphan girl. He began to feel sorry for the little girl, and saw a lot of himself in her when he lost his parents, after some thought he drove down to the orphanage and asked if he could adopt the girl, after some conversation and paperwork he adopted her and took her back to her new home, she couldn’t remember her old name, and so she decided she wanted to be called ‘Abi’.

After Abi moved in with Ray, he’s live began to brighten up again, he re-opened the shop and got back to business, well whatever oil business had left. She reminded him a lot of his daughter which was comforting because it recalled some of good memories he had with his wife and daughter, it also reminded him that he couldn’t protect them as well he wanted to, so he promised himself that he would gain the strength that he need to protect her.

One of the main objectives of this project is to create your character in the style of a golden aged animator. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ve probably seen some of the animators that I’ve looked at, but the ones that have stood out for me the most for me would be Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, mostly because of their work on Looney Tunes. I really like their work as well as their style (even though it’ll take a while for me to adapt) and I really think that it would be the best style to fit my character.

I’ve been looking at the character Chuck Jones created called ‘Goosmar’, the reason for this is because of the character’s height and build as well as his movements are somewhat similar to what I want from my character. So I plan to use the character as a reference for when I make the turn around and poses.

As for the rest of the project I will begin the backstory of my character, as well as drawing up the poses this weekend.

I think it’s become a tradition at this where I would change my idea halfway through the project, but hey here we are.

With my last idea of having a Highwayman/woman I felt like the hideout that I created as well as the story for the character wasn’t very strong and I eventually ended up hating the idea. So after stumbling into a conversation about the show Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Terry Crew’s character on the show, I thought of creating a big, muscular character with a weird obsession with a random item, and so I created Ray Sunshine, a passive-aggressive, second hand oil filter shop owner, who lives in an alternate future with a weird obsession with milk.

Today we received our new project that will keep us occupied from now till near Easter. It will also be our first animation that will be in 3D, so I’ll finally some form of advantage of the other students.

The task is to create a liar for an alter ego that you can think of, so like a Hero, Villain, God, Monster… Postman and do a sort of “MTV Cribz” tour of the lair.

Another task we were also introduced to the second Animation studies task as well, which is to create a character in a style of a golden age character I’ve done some research Here.

These two project interlink with one another. ‘Alter Ego’ we have to design a lair for our alter ego and ‘Origins’ is to create a character, which is really useful because you can create a character and then build the lair around their personality, goals, likes and dislikes etc…

So far I’ve come with an idea of a character. A Highwayman/woman. The character will be a young spirit, who has just adopted the lifestyle of a highwayman and wants to prove themselves the best of the best. At the moment it’s just ideas and some visualisations, but I will develop the idea, character and liar as the week progresses.

Loads of recognisable characters that they’ve and/or worked on such as Scooby Doo, Wacky Racers, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Hong Kong Phooey, The Smurfs, Top Cat, as well as Tom and Jerry